


The Five Things (+1) Eddie Kaspbrak Does After Richie Tozier Dies.

by ghostin



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Character Death, Death, Depression, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Minor benverly, Richie and Stan friendship, graphic description of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 10:12:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17785460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostin/pseuds/ghostin
Summary: Sometimes it feels like he’s still there. Yes, again, Eddie knows he’s not. He’s been told that enough times already that he truly knows but Eddie Kaspbrak perfected the art of fake swallowing all those pills his mother coaxed him into taking over the course of eighteen years, only to spit them out into the bathroom sink so it’s easy enough to fool people into thinking that he’s swallowed the agonizing waves of Richie being gone.Or, the five things Eddie Kaspbrak does after Richie Tozier dies.





	The Five Things (+1) Eddie Kaspbrak Does After Richie Tozier Dies.

**Author's Note:**

> *pops up* hello! i’m back! happy valentine’s day! i hope you all keep your cards just like eddie did, & celebrate it just as reddie would. 
> 
> on a real, the break was super helpful, and one hundred percent needed on my behalf. it helped me put things in perspective, and with coming back. this is one of my favorite works in the World, so i really wanted it to be the first thing i (re)publish. i hope you all like it (again)! feel free to follow me on my IT tumblr at @/loserscare and drop me what you think. happy valentine’s day to all who do celebrate, and to whomever doesn’t, i hope you have a great day, i’m sorry if this made u sad ;( <3

  

 

  **1**.  ** **Looks at the right side of the bed.****

 

Just stares. He knows there is nothing to look at, okay? Eddie _knows._

 

 

But sometimes, just sometimes, it feels like he’s still there. Yes, again, Eddie knows he’s _not_ . He’s been told that enough times already that he truly knows - but Eddie Kaspbrak perfected the art of fake swallowing all those pills his mother coaxed him into taking over the course of eighteen years, only to spit them out into the bathroom sink so it’s easy enough to fool people into thinking that he’s swallowed the agonizing waves of Richie being gone. But, Eddie thinks, it’s all the same. The same as when Eddie stops in the middle of a joke to do that _‘pause and effect’_ thing that _he_ taught Eddie, and the smaller boy waits, yanks the silence in the joke longer and longer until it’s painfully awkward in front of a group of co-workers or new friends. Yet, he still _waits._ Waits and Waits to hear that laugh; the one that never comes. It doesn’t stop him, though, not from keeping his ears open and listening for the one time that it maybe will again.

 

 

Or, Eddie assumes, it’s the same as when he pokes his foot out at the end of the couch, absentmindedly, while writing an essay for some the English 101 course he’s taking this semester - one that Richie would ridicule to no end, how unimportant it is for his for his Psychology major. He’ll usually just nudge once, maybe twice, until he notices that no one has pushed back, that his foot hasn’t touched a warm body dangling on the other side with a beanie pulled over their eyes, snoring slightly. No one has grabbed his foot to tickle it, resulting in him doubling over in squeals and snorts.

 

 

And, Eddie thinks, it’s more than sometimes that he’ll be snuggled up in bed, with white cotton sheets cradling his shoulder blades and back, flooding over his hair as he watches rerun episodes of _Saturday Night Live_ , without any mentions of how Richie would marry Kate Mckinnon if he got his hands on her. Instead, it’s a night filled with Eddie looking over, with a soft sense of something else shifting in those warm brown eyes, to try and meet Richie’s blue ones. He will glance, again and again, over at the right side of the cheap mattress they bought at a thrift store in downtown Portland, and will wind up staring at the purple, tie-dye pillowcase that still smells like _him_ for what feels like for hours. Until his eyes are lined with tears that he never gets to shed because he has to keep it together when he sees _anyone_ \- even when he squints while waiting for his clothes at the laundromat down the street, and the dark, twisty curls of the stores clerk look like _his_ for a split second. Because Eddie Kaspbrak has to keep himself together or no one else will.

 

 

  **2**.  **Still thinks of Richie Tozier.**

 

And it hurts. More than he would ever admit.

 

 

It’s when he’s out to dinner with Mike, Bill, and Stan on the Losers get together they have every Sunday night, that Eddie feels a different type of agony. The boys are in the middle of bickering about who the best superhero is - because they’re twenty one and still _kids_ , and Eddie can’t help but think that if Richie were here he’d fit snugly between him and Bill on the opposite side of Stan and Mike, yelling that it’s most _obviously_ the Hulk. They’re all sitting in the furthest booth at the back of a local bar when a young jewish boy slips; Stan honestly doesn’t know any better, no one can blame him. His hand is clasped tightly around an almost empty beer bottle, and before he even registers what he’s saying (because before the _incident_ , he’d never have to guard what he talked about around them) he’s blurting out how he wishes that Ben and Beverly could’ve made it tonight, even though they’ve been stuck in that horrible snow storm in New York since yesterday, because without them it doesn’t feel like they’re really a whole group.

 

 

And that’s it, that’s when it hits Eddie; harder than the usual pounding that takes over his head when his other half is skimmed over in social settings like this.

 

 

This, instead, brings a new pain. A pain that becomes something that’s not just emotional, but _physical_ , because it feels something like an ache, or losing a tooth; when you keep poking the bloody socket because you forget that it’s no longer there. One that will wash over his body every night at 2am. Or at 7am. Or at 5pm. Whenever he’s _awake_ and his eyes are open; it happens, and will drown him in the waves of the bright red numbers on Eddie’s alarm clock that seemingly burn into his eyes because they’re the same color of Richie’s vans that he wore on their very first date when they were fifteen. The ones that are in the closet across the hall from _their_ room that still isn’t emptied of all his things, the ones in a cardboard box the size of a record player, which was the first present Eddie had bought with his own money for Richie when he was seventeen.

 

 

Eddie sometimes has to admit it hurts.

 

 

_“I just miss him.”_

 

 

The first thing Eddie thinks when he says it, is that he thinks it’s loose. A flimsy, silly attempt to say completely how he feels; almost incoherent at the rowdy table of his friends and in a bar full of football fans on a Sunday. It slips out before he can really control it, though, lips cheating out his mind, much like Stan’s. Saying it out loud stings more, because saying it aloud makes it real. And he doesn’t _want_ it to be real.

 

 

He gets the look he knows he’ll get from Bill; the one where his eyebrows knit together, the little slit on the left side tilting, and he worries his lip between his two front teeth, a look of pure sadness and _pity_ wallowing in those wide, adventure seeking blue eyes. He watches Stan’s knuckles on the bottle turn from a casual clutch to a tight vice grip that has his fingers quickly becoming a paleish-blue white. It looks as if the Bud Light could burst any minute; like the glass could go flying across the table, only to strike him and Mike in the face like the windshield glass in Richie’s when that damn car smashed against his body when it stopped a little too late.

 

 

Let's be clear here - it’s not that Eddie expects much - or _more_ \- because he doesn’t; he doesn’t expect anything. Expecting would be assuming, and assuming is thinking something is going to happen; _wanting_ to something to happen, and after Richie took his last breath on the side of the road, Eddie knows no amount of begging to God could help bring him good anymore.

 

 

The one thing that does surprise Eddie is Mike. Personable, sweet, sturdy, predictable Mike. Mike, who never pushes, never pulls, just comforts without a word. He sighs; loudly from his space next to Eddie, wrapping arms around his slender middle, where his ribs protrude just slightly (he hasn’t eaten much the past two months since _the thing_ happened) “We do, too.”

 

 

    **3**.  ** **Eddie calls.****

 

His friends don’t know this one. If they did the reaction wouldn’t be as _great_ as the time at the bar a couple months ago. Beverly would probably scream, Eddie thinks, scream until her face is as ruby red as her hair was the summer she moved to Derry, Maine and the sun shimmered a crystal halo above the curls of her freshly cut hair. You could make her out from just that, miles away, Eddie recalls.

 

 

A couple weeks ago, she ended up finding all the cards Richie had ever written him: birthdays cards, valentines, doodles from the back of their french class, all of it. She turned to him, pale as a ghost, as Eddie made his morning coffee, and yelled at him - yelled, shouted, _screamed_ , until there was venom dripping from her mouth and a shake in her hands; telling Eddie to stop pretending Richie’s still here with him, _stop pretending that he’s still alive._

 

 

Eddie distinctly remembers when he called Beverly Marsh on a dreary Monday evening to tell her how the front part of her best friend’s 2008 Toyota Corolla was crushed against the front end of a semi. There was a waver in his voice, splashing through the phone line from Boston to New York in patches, and in cracks of Eddie’s heart and Richie’s bones; Beverly sobbed (Eddie doesn’t know if she ever stopped), dropping to the floor with a phone clutched in her hand, trembling as quick breaths hitched in her chest over and over. Eddie remembers how she forgot to hang up, and hearing Ben whispering sweet nothings into, what he imagines was, her hair softly. Holding her when she was a tear ridden mess until she was a hiccuping woman on the kitchen floor, feeling like a little girl who lost everything, _again_ . And Eddie Kaspbrak doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the shuffling sound of Beverly sitting up, muffled and scratchy, when he heard her speaking with such a confidence - that he hadn’t heard since she told all of the boys how she _loved_ them all so, the summer before she moved to Portland - telling Ben Hanscom that she wished it was _her_ , wished it was her crushed between the engine at the seat cushion, before she falls apart again and again. Eddie doesn’t remember if she heard him say that he wishes it was him instead, too.

 

 

Eddie knows he listened to all Richie’s voice mails; knows that he’s heard every single one. The one on Monday, a week before _the accident_ happened, when Richie picked up spaghetti from the supermarket and called Eddie just to tell the  “Eddie-Spaghetti” joke for old times sake, with the level of excitement in his voice that made Eddie’s stomach do flips; the exact same tone he had when he pushed Eddie off the swing in kindergarten. Eddie thinks back, back to when he listened to the very first one on a chilly September afternoon, the night he got his _first_ flip phone and Richie called him to leave a voice message of just straight screaming for 60 seconds, and Eddie complained at the time but, now, he wants nothing more than to have that screaming goofball back in his life so much that it _hurts_ his stomach to even think about the spaghetti he bought that Monday.

 

 

But, Eddie still calls. Makes it a ritual to, everyday before work, breakfast, and right when he wakes up. Every night before bed, dinner, or right after he brushes his teeth; because he loves to listen to Richie’s laughter on the other end, intertwined with his, as he says _“This is Reddie Kaspzier here, be sure to leave your mom’s number after the beep-beep Trashmouth!”_. He listens to it because he misses Richie driving him to work, one hand on the steering wheel and the other on Eddie’s thigh, he misses Richie making him pancakes sprinkled with Reeses on Saturdays, he misses Richie waking him up with kisses so long and drawn-out that it makes Eddie decide that his shift at the restaurant can wait just for his soulmate. He misses the dip of Richie’s body pressed up against his at night, always on the right side of the bed; closest to the wall because even if it’s in the little ways, Eddie wants Richie to feel protected too. He misses the terrible lasagna Richie made for him with too much sauce and not enough cheese, and he misses brushing his teeth with the body he grew up with next to him. Eddie can still see the low-slung Simpson boxers on Richie’s boney hips as they sing along to the local radio on full blast, buzzing electrical tooth brushes dangling from their mouths and paste mixing as they kiss.

 

 

Time moves almost differently when you’ve had your other half your whole life, and suddenly, you don’t. It’s something that others don’t understand; time used to fit in Eddie’s palm and slip away without a notice. He could fit it in his pocket, and trace it with his fingertips. It lived with him, yet never haunted him. Now, it’s too big to fit in his hands, and it runs over his body like static electricity, lives in the dark parts of his belly, and lungs, reminds him with every step how slow the time will go now, how constant it will be, and how it will haunt him.

 

 

Eddie Kaspbrak misses Richie Tozier, and he knows he always will.

 

 

  **4**.  **Eddie tries to move on.**

 

_Tried_.

 

 

He fumbles, slowly, like a kid falling off a bike for the first time without training wheels, when the subject is brought upon an evening with Maggie and Wentworth Tozier. Eddie likes to think, as he’s riding the bike in his mind, that he’s got wobbly, bruised knees; covered in Spongebob band aids that a certain curly headed boy stuck on him, but beautiful nonetheless; ready to jump on his good ol’ red and silver bike sitting on his front yard from when he was nine years old.

 

 

“You know, Eddie,” Maggie starts that day, while Went is in the kitchen grabbing some more honey tea. Her tone like a mother (not like his, but a _mother),_ and Eddie already knows where the conversation is heading, like clockwork. She places a warm hand on Eddie’s thigh, rubbing along the torn denim that belongs to Richie. Eddie likes to pull up with a belt and wrap around his slender frame, he doesn’t like the thought of anything _Richie_ going somewhere that’s not on himself. “You can, get out there, you know? Find someone for you. I think it would be good for you. It’s been almost a year.”

 

 

The younger boy understands she means well, he _does_ , but he can’t help the clench of his fists, little, tiny crescent moons appearing in the dipping center of his palm. It’s _has_ been almost a year, he thinks, and he would relive it all over again, millions of times, if it meant he’d wake up from this nightmare, in a cold sweat with beady eyes - like he used to on bleek nights Richie didn’t sneak in his window - and he’d be back in the other boys arms.

 

 

Maggie gazes at him, for a long time, tears settling on her soft, bottom lashes, and brings her other hand up like Richie always would. (Eddie has started to flinch away when people reach to touch him; he even shoved Ben a week ago when the boy tried to hug him, and slammed the door when Bill tried to rub his heaving shoulder while he sobbed for hours after he watched Richie’s old home videos on their nikon video camera.) There is a sense in the air, with this single mellow touch, as if the hand is Richie’s again. And when he looks into Maggie’s cozy brown eyes, he almost forgets it’s not. Forgets it _isn’t_ twenty-one year old Richie Tozier, with torn, fingerless gloved hands and lingering touches. It smashes into Eddie’s mind then (like the semi did to his _Richie_ ), that this is in fact not Richie Tozier. It does so when he remembers Richie Tozier never had the chance to make it to twenty-one.

 

 

That’s when the imaginary bike he’s been riding in his mind on starts to wobble. Eddie’s knees with blossoming patches of purple start to shake, and his hands on the steering wheel turn to crash in the ditch by the Quarry where their lips touched for the first time during an occasional game of ‘manhunt’ with the rest of the Losers.

 

 

Big, droopy tears are falling out of Maggie’s almond eyes, cascading down her red, blotchy cheeks and there’s a distinct sniffle in her voice that sounds familiar (Eddie doesn’t have to think too hard to know where he’s heard it from), “Promise me, Eddie. Promise me you won’t let this hold you back.”

 

 

Eddie doesn’t want to, no, he really, really doesn’t. He doesn’t think he could _ever_ move on; the words make him want to run down the long, twisty hall, push past Wentworth, and press his mouth into the icky toilet bowl; the same one Richie puked into graduation night, but between every gagging breath repeating over and over again how _stunning_ he thought Eddie was.

 

 

And the overwhelming feeling he gets is wanting to lie, wipe away her tears the same way he would wipe away Richie’s, and tell her that Richie stopped holding him back _weeks_ ago. After Eddie threw away that wristband Richie got when he saw Bruce Springsteen in concert for the first time, in a fit of rage that _he_ was gone. But Eddie stops that confession short, remembering how hard he cried the next morning; how hard he ripped through the apartment complex trash at 5am, searching until his hands were red and numb from the cold from trying to find the flimsy neon green, plastic wristband with 2016 THE RIVER TOUR printed on it.

 

 

“I promise.” He surrenders, the words rolling off his tongue too easy. Part of him wishes Maggie caught on because they feel like they were printed on a script and shoved into his hands, like they’ve been practiced a million times; as if that’s what he’s been saying in the mirror every single morning as he splashes water on his face, and not a mantra of _‘I’m sorry’’s_ feeding into his play pretend; the only that helps him believe that if he says it enough times into his reflection than Richie will hear him.

 

 

But, Eddie Kaspbrak is no coward, and definitely not one to go against his word. He tosses and turns in his bed that night, flipping on his back then his stomach, glaring at the black headboard above him; there are traces of a deep gray behind it from when it bumped against the wall hard.

 

 

Eddie thinks about this until he’s tripping over his feet to get into bathroom and throws up in the tub, a inch short of the sink but _who cares_. He doesn’t bother to stand up as he strips off his clothes and runs the shower, curling up in a ball, and sobbing until the water turns cold like Richie hated; his fingers pruning the way they used to giggle at.

 

 

When he gets back into bed, his body tingles, his eyes are hooded, and Maggie’s words echo in his head as he stares at the right side of the bed.

 

 

If Richie was out there, Eddie knows this is what he would want, too. He would want Eddie getting taken home by a warm stranger, someone who will love him, kiss him, hold him.  It makes a pain course through Eddie’s body, one that’s slow and churning; playing hide and seek in his bones and setting up tent behind his joints like the tent Richie sent up in his backyard when they broke up for a week Junior year and didn’t leave until Eddie would talk to him again. It burns, _oh_ , it burns -- like drenching an open wound in salty water, or being set on fire over and over until there is nothing but ashes and dust. Eddie howls to the moon with his undenying hurt the rest of the night, because he knows he needs to try.

 

 

So, that is how he ends up here, a stranger pressing kisses up and down his neck outside his apartment door, a hand curling behind Eddie’s back desperately, which almost makes him recoil in disgust but he remembers Maggie’s voice in his head. _It will be good for you. It will be good for you._ They stumble in the front door, Eddie’s legs trying to keep up with this mans -- Kyle, Ken, Keith? Eddie can’t remember, now, there is too much whiskey in his stomach. Richie absolutely hated whiskey; maybe that is why Eddie did it.

 

 

“Mhmm.” Keith, or whatever, lets out a breathy sound, and Eddie tugs him down the hallway by his bulky arms, whispering in his ear to make it to the bed, faster, _please_ , _faster;_ Eddie can’t tell if he’s saying faster because can’t wait, or if he wants to get there before he starts to overthink it all.

 

 

They take a sharp turn at the end of the long hallway, and all Eddie feels is being thrown down again, lightly, and this time on a softer surface that the brick wall outside their - _his_ \- apartment door. The mattress curves with his body, and Eddie turns his head to the side, pressing his cheek to the cool of his sheets as the other man makes his way down his body. Letting his eyes flutter shut as there’s a different kind of bruise making its way onto his shivering collarbone. Just as they’re about to close permanently, they make eye contact with the purple, tie-dye pillow case on the bed. And for a split second it's curly hair and glasses and buck teeth and freckles and deep brown eyes and chapped lips and there’s a scar on his eyebrow that wasn’t there before, but if he survived the crash maybe there would be...and _there_ is Richard Tozier laying right next to him.

 

 

Eddie’s first reaction is to freeze. He stops, breathing and all, the arms rubbing up and down the sturdy man atop of him cease. “R-Richie?”

 

 

It comes out quite, weak, a croaking in his voice like the ‘I miss you’ moment at the bar months ago; it’s welcoming and sincere but the boy laying on the right side of the bed doesn’t move, only stares right back.

 

 

“Richie?” Eddie asks again, Keith leans back on his heels, a confused look etched on his face as the cute boy laying in front of him says the name a bit louder. The other man doesn’t move; trying to mentally decide if it is okay to comfort, to reach out a hand and touch Eddie, who seems to be on the verge of screaming this _name_ . It’s not until this stranger is across the room from him, and yelling back at Eddie to calm down ( _as if that’s easy_ ); not until his hands are shaking so bad Eddie couldn’t possibly stand any longer, that he _stops_. Wrapping his sore arms around the pillow to his right.

 

 

Eddie hugs the item tightly to his chest, the fabric pressed against him like a second set of much thicker skin. “I - I think you should leave.”

 

 

If the words were physical, if they could float into the air for all to see and touch, they’d be mushy and bendable, Eddie thinks, like cheap playdough. They feel heavy leaving Eddie’s tongue.

 

 

_Richie_ , _how did I even let myself get this far?_

 

 

The heaving is subdued, for now, but there’s only a light shake in Eddie’s fingertips as he grips and rips gently at the frayed edges of the faded pillow case.

 

 

“Uh, Ed?” Eddie braces the blow to his stomach on _that_ one, flinching as the nickname leaves this strangers twisted mouth. In a filthy and revolting manor; it’s too close to the _one_. The one that, still to this day, made his stomach feel tied in knots, like Richie’s headphones would always be, stuffed messily into his pocket while in a rush out the door to the radio station every morning, but he never failed to leave a kiss on Eddie’s cheek, mouth, forehead, anywhere he could get those lips.

 

 

Richie came up with the name in kindergarten; a crayon in his hands and two front teeth missing as he toppled over Eddie in snickers. If Eddie closes his eyes assiduously enough, he can picture the name tags at the top of his table. He can envision _Edward Kaspbrak_ written in skinny, permanent marker letters on a laminated name tag. His was surrounded by little pictures of manly dinosaurs, like all the boys got, Richie’s name printed right next to his (their chairs were pulled closer together than most kids were).

 

 

Eddie doesn’t like to think about how Richie crossed out their names, replacing their long, fancy names with _‘Eds & Trashmouth’ _ during an indoor recess, ignoring Stan and Eddie’s constant protests on how idiotic it was, letting out a snigger with Bill as he scribbled around the desk, telling Eddie everyone had to know that _they_ were the dream team, and Eddie couldn’t be on anyone else's team.

 

 

_God, Rich, why had a crush on me way back then, did you now?_

 

 

Thus resulting in the scrubbing of desks until the extra ink was clean off, and the tapping down of brand-new tags one whole afternoon while the other Losers went to the Quarry.

 

 

Eddie still has the original tag stuffed in that cardboard box with _his_ vans.

 

 

“Are you sure you’re going to be fi --” Eddie cuts him off before he can ask the dreaded question he’s gotten the past eleven months.

 

 

“Yes. I’ll be _fine._ I am fine.”

 

 

No, no, he’s not fine, he is _not_ at all fine. The smaller boy can assure you that.

 

 

_Richie would be able to tell. He would be able to tell at first glance._

 

 

Eddie wants to tell _Keith_ that the elephant that has been laying on his stomach since he was a child, the fake elephant Sonia Kaspbrak strung upon him, has taken a new form and shape; it no longer represents the breathing problems his mother forgered on his life sentence and birth papers, but instead, it is an arrangement of true and utter heartbreak. A messy configuration of blanket forts, christmas lights, unlit cigarettes, mixtapes, sneaking in windows, bubble beards in the bathtub, your mom jokes, shattering windows, and a brake pedal pressed too late; all of _that_ glued together.

 

 

The force has a soul composed entirely of that shattering feeling of _emptiness_. Because Eddie hasn’t once felt full since Richie left that morning for work and never came home.

 

 

Eddie wants to tell Keith that he only thought things like _this_ happened in those cheesy romantic-drama movies that won academy awards. That he really thought, and he means, _really_ thought (Eddie wants to laugh at how _pathetic_ it sounds now) that after the damn clown, the world was done with giving all seven of them living hell. Eddie thought that _hey_ , maybe God looked down and gave them a pass for awhile; just until Richie and him were settled down with grandkids, and they had to use small wooden canes to get around. Eddie finds it funny, almost lets out a puffy laugh at it, that he used to wish he _didn’t_ exist -- with everything that happened the fateful summer of his thirteenth year, the last thing on Eddie’s mind was living or thriving as doing so. But, he thinks about that hazy night Richie dragged him up onto his own, creaky roof as Sonia was fast asleep to Full House reruns on the first floor, he low voice of Dave Coulier coming fuzzily through Eddie’s open window, and told Eddie that every star in the whole, wide expanse of the sky was created just for him. Just for _Eddie_ _Kaspbrak_ to look at.

 

 

He recalls Richie whispering into his mouth, wet and hot, that if he had to recreate, build, and shape every star in the universe with his own two hands, all over again, he would do it. Just. For. _Eddie Kaspbrak_. _Only. For. Eddie Kaspbrak._ Each word punctuated with a sloppy kiss, stating with no hesitation that doesn’t matter if his hands were burning, blistering, or scarred; he would do it until the end of time if it meant that proved his love, his damn _devotion_.

 

 

He would cock back his arm from that very roof, and throw them into the sky just for _Eddie Kaspbrak_ to wish upon.

 

 

He did this, Eddie winces, all because he slipped one day that he didn’t find very much excitement in _being alive_ anymore.

 

 

And Eddie wants, wants with his whole heart, to tell this man, that the imaginary bike in his mind is on the ground. That the navy blue handle bars are digging into the dirt as they speak, the metal is scuffed up, and wheels are resting on the patchy, greenish tan blades of grass aside the road; his knees skidded across the gravel so hard and fast that they’re scraped up, blood running over the bruises he’s got flourishing on his sun kissed skin.

 

 

Richie taught him how to ride a bike the summer before fifth grade, all because Eddie complained the whole walk home from Derry Middle School that the cool kids knew how to, but he _didn’t_ . Eddie sniffles when he thinks about the fact that he used _that_ as his weak excuse to hold Richie’s hand. The taller boy balanced him, as the smaller boy peddled his feet as fast as they could go, before pushing Eddie forward to go down his paved street, Richie biting his own lip harshly to keep the face-splitting grin on his face in check when the other boy _finally_ gets the hang of it; not falling nearly as many times as the Tozier boy did (it was only convenient that he was wearing some dark-washed blue jeans that definitely _weren't_ purposely ripped).

 

 

But Richie isn’t here now; not here to pick up Eddie, who’s sobbing with hiccuping shoulders and letting ugly noises bubble up and out of his mouth like a child in the sheets where _Richie_ slept last. Richie’s not wiping up the blood with cotton swabs and pouring alcohol on it to cleanse it, with such delicate touch, one you wouldn’t expect from a young boy; topping everything off with those patches he bought from the pharmacy downtown and brushed on kisses against the scrapes on Eddie’s sore kneecaps, one by one -- just like he did Sophomore year when Eddie fell down during a track meet and twisted his ankle.

 

 

So, he locks the door as soon as Keith is out, and stepping out  into the cold with a jacket in hand, and a mouth stuffed to the brim of unasked questions. Eddie slides his body against the door, the one that Richie would forget to lock every night as he slipped into bed with a cheeky smile on his face and tongue in cheek. His sweater ridges catching on the bumpy wood as his butt hits the floor with a _thud_. He’s still clutching the pillow for dear life, like Richie gripped his face when his arm snapped out place in the Neibolt house, curls tickling Eddie’s left eyebrow.

 

 

Eddie doesn’t let go because he wants to prove to Richie, if that god damn boy is up there watching him somewhere that he didn’t _mean_ it. He just caved to the pulsating voices pressed against his ear, burning onto his skin that he needs to move on, that Eddie Kaspbrak needs to _grow_. Grow and grow up.

 

 

Eddie shuffles onto his knees, the ones that are battered and bruised in mind, and kneels on the floor, dropping his head against the carpeted floor, letting his tears seep into the grey material. It’s like he had been born like this, born with Richie already inside his heart and now that part aches. Eddie wonders why he thought he ever needed to change after he met Richie, why he ever thought he needed anything more. Being in love with Richie was like sitting in a room filled with his favorite things. All his favorite sweatshirts, comic books, photos, tattered chemistry notebooks, and action figures, and there's a blackish mark on the ceiling from that one time that Richie accidentally upperhandidly threw one of his Doc Martens up there to kill a spider. The bed is soft and the sheets smell like fresh laundry and the pillow has an indentation the same exact size of Eddie’s head. Everything is clean, yet wild, and everything feels wholly comfortable, and familiar, yet new.

 

 

Eddie hears Maggie’s words for a second time that night, vibrating against his temple, throbbing in his brain; it’s pressing at the edges of his eyelids, clawing at his lips, fuming at his ears with such violence Eddie emits one last choked whimper. He, for first time in eleven months, let’s go of all expectations, and lets himself go.

 

 

_It would be good for you. It would be good for you._

 

 

The next thing that comes out of Eddie’s mouth is the strongest thing he has ever said, besides the first _I love you_ that slipped out, pressed up against Richie’s wet jacket, during a snowball fight at Bill’s house, when Richie, with snow sprinkled hair and rosy cheeks, looked over at him with such joy and happiness, and Eddie knew he was looking back at his _forever_. There is a castle of bricks protecting his expression.. His voice doesn’t waver, and he doesn’t even begin to hesitate. He is in love with Richie Tozier, and Eddie knows he always will be.

 

 

“ _You’re wrong._ ”

 

 

  **5**.  **Eddie changes his last name.**

 

It doesn't come to a shock to the Losers, on this one. It’s a final step of sorts.

 

 

They’re huddled around Eddie, who’s got trembling hands, and drippy tears hanging onto his eyelids, he’s signing away at the last of his strenuous papers. It’s been a long couple months since his meeting with Maggie, one year came and went from Richie Tozier being gone, and Eddie decided that this would help with the healing. He thought, that maybe, if he felt like everything Richie was wrapped around him like his boyfriend’s ( _husband_ , Eddie likes to say) theatre sweatshirt was everyday of Senior year when they were going through a _I have to show-off what’s mine_ stage _,_ that he would feel better and happier.

 

 

He grew up over these past few months, and he goes through the motions of learning, splits his time between classes, daydreaming, and shifts at the restaurant. He goes through hobbies, clothes, class notes, and phases that are too disgraceful to even mention again. A progression typical of children of their age, but this - his last name, Eddie has always wanted that.

 

 

He had to bring Richie’s parents to some court setting-thing to get all of it approved, driving in for a whole week at 4am to talk to some random judge about _why_ he wanted to change his last name from Kaspbrak to Tozier.

 

 

It stung, Eddie thinks, looking back it the whole...lengthy process. At times, it seemed to not be worth it; as if all it amounted to be was a reminder of _him_ being gone, the process nuzzled roughly against his sensitive, closing wounds. The casual lingo bumping against the still pink scar tissue from the mental bike he toppled off of, the outline of his scars still felt prominent when the old, cranky judge talked almost too openly, too soon, about the car and the day and _him_. But Eddie needed to do it, he knew he did. He wanted all of it so bad, all of Richie, and if this is what it meant to help him cope, so be it.

 

 

Eddie remembers how that skin crawling feeling would take him over in the middle of the night, in the middle of work, in the middle of a damn conversation. Lips open ready to reply and then he would think about it. Now, it wasn’t the same pain, nor the burning sensation of loss, but instead, almost a worst sensation. He could and _would_ stay up at night thinking and thinking, his mind emitting smoke until he was sweating and Eddie’s hands were clenched fists around the sheets. Thinking about how he was stuck with _Kaspbrak_ \-- nothing but a word; attached to his sickening mother, string by string, looped and tying him in evermore like she was playing cats cradle. He felt like a stack of disjointed bones, aching and stuffed away with all the pain it gifted him. He hadn’t wanted it, not at all, wanted to brush it off like the dirt in his hands after planting flowers with Richie on their apartment balcony in little pots. He wanted Tozier; he desired that fuzzy feeling that made a pit-stop in his lower tummy, making his toes curl whenever he said _‘I am Edward Tozier.’_

 

 

So, for one of the first time in Eddie’s life, he did what he needed to do. He never remembers being this sure of something, unless you count the evening Richie and Eddie bumped shoulders while walking down the beach on a group vacation with the rest of the group, and Richie asked if Eddie would like to move in with him. Eddie said yes.

 

 

Eddie doesn’t cry as much once it’s all over, he doesn’t think. Mike tells him he’s made a lot of progress since Richie’s makeshift funeral they’d had all those months ago, hunched over Richie’s body, bawling until his eyelids were stained red and snot was running down his cupid's bow. Washing away salty tears on the collar of Stan’s pastel pink polo in the middle of the service (Stan still has the shirt). The Tozier’s and the rest of Losers decided that they didn’t want to lower Richie’s body into the ground in front of Eddie; everybody knew that wasn’t _right_. So, they planned on a day when Maggie and Wentworth could arrive to the funeral home while the Losers stayed at what used to be Richie and Eddie’s apartment with Eddie. _Comfort him the best you can,_ Wentworth smiled weakly, a heavy hand on Beverly’s shoulder.

 

 

Eddie’s mind always floats to the dreams he had, when he wonders about these times, he recalls pushing himself up onto his palms in bed, sweat clinging his hair down in place. He remembers staring down at his fingers, inspecting the underside of his nails. Shaking because his brain _must_ have been playing tricks on him but the dreams where so real; dreams where he dug Richie out of the ground with his bare hands, bloodshot eyes, gripping and thrusting the boys shoulders forward and back until he jolted awake with a smile and a _‘PUNKED YA, EDS!’_ . But _that would never happen._

 

 

It was on a Sunday, 5pm to be exact. After all the Losers had already said goodbye to the bodied case that had held Richie’s spirit; he was lowered, sunk, six feet under, into the wet dirt. Tacked into his favorite orange Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned per request of the boys, and a Doors shirt slipped underneath. His lips were cracked and turning an uneasy color of purple, skin even paler than before, old glasses with tape down the middle laying limp in his left hand. (Eddie kept his newer ones. Still perched in the medicine cabinet).

 

 

As this was happening, Eddie sat at home. Curled up in a fluffy, green blanket covered in little dog-paw prints that was Richie’s favorite; ever since he was a child. Eddie remembers using the skimpy thing while he slept on the mattress, flipped onto Richie’s bedroom floor whenever he slept over in third grade. He remembers the flash forward ten years, and snuggling that curly headed boy under a bundle of mushed blankets - the _dog_ one included  - Freshman year.

 

 

While Eddie sat, Beverly Marsh was the kitchen, wobbly knees paired with staring eyes and twitchy hands, nibbling on her bottom lip so rough it was beginning to bleed. All while making a cup of tea like she used to do for Richie on their ‘girls night’’s, dancing to Mamma Mia and gushing about Meryl Streep.

 

 

Bill Denbrough was on the other side of the couch, opposite to Eddie with his legs dangling over the edge; if you asked, Bill probably wouldn’t even remember pressing the remote control numbers. Bill couldn’t pay any attention to the channels he had been flipping through, not with what was happening on the other side of town, not with the looks on Maggie and Wentworth's faces clean and clear in his mind, stinging his brain.

 

 

As he was sitting there, kicking his feet aimlessly, he _remembers_. Remembers the time Richie and him played a game where the two went through movies and shows on TV and had to guess the names of each, Richie’s laugh burrowed through the room in his auburn head, big hands covering the title screen. An unpleasant feeling erupts in Bill’s stomach at the thought. The sound of Anderson Cooper is pumping softly out of the speakers, and Bill lets his head lull back. He stared at the white ceiling until it turned fuzzy and he had to run to the bathroom down the hallway.

 

 

Stanley Uris was huddled next to Eddie. His head pressed against the other boys small, nervously twitching thigh. The Jewish boy had his legs linked under another pink blanket he took off the door hook, making sure not to steal any of Eddie’s. He also doesn’t think Eddie knows he keeps sneaking glances up at him, yet, he finds out that he indeed does when soft eyes meet his in a way that makes the smaller boys lip quiver.

 

 

Stan rubs a hand up and down Eddie’s ankle without a thought, adding pressure to places he feels tension. It’s a comfort strategy that Eddie had done to Stan, when struggled through his finals Senior year. And Stan really wants to blame himself back then, because once he starts thinking and remembering and reminiscing _he can’t stop._

 

 

He remembers coming out to Richie, muffling cries into the cotton of Richie’s _Speedy Gonzales_ t-shirt, them tumbling around on Stan’s neatly made bed as the taller boy told him that _there was nothing wrong with him,_ that he would _always be there for Stan, even if the world was crumbling because he was Richie’s best friend._ Stan takes it back now, but he was quite spiteful. He wanted to yell at Richie, bare his teeth, and ignore the lanky boy for one straight week; Stan knows he would do that if Richie were here and _that’s_ why Stan is mad because he _isn’t here when he needs to be._

 

 

Yet, Stan doesn’t say anything, just rubs his hands together so hard that his his knuckles crack without warning, filling the void of what Bill wanted to be Eddie’s laugh.

 

 

Mike Hanlon had his legs draped over Ben, head on a stiff throw pillow, and his body scattered across the living room floor. He was watching the channel as it changes from CNN 360° to _That 70’s Show._ Ben is staring at Mike’s foot that’s bouncing in his lap; an indication that the darker male is in heavy thought. He’s right.

 

 

Mike, in his mind, was going through the stages of remembering Richie Tozier. Remembering the quiet, passerby phases of Richie Tozier. Most specifically, the one who would saunter over to the barn at five o’clock every week day during the summer of Senior year, to make some money for college by doing chores. He had the top part of his long, greasy hair pulled back in an embarrassing attempt of a man bun, and a bright pink cut off shirt that was _most definitely_ Eddie’s paired with obnoxiously yellow swim trunks, and some of flip flops from the dollar store downtown, the tags still on. Mike had laughed at him until the sky was turning blue and black, illuminating sections of silver. Laughed until Richie’s sunburn was a crimson red. Laughed until it was just Richie and him who sat outside, no chickens pecking at Richie’s open toes. Mike remembers how they let the coolish warm breeze run against their skin, laying back to back on the big rock outside of his Grandfather's farm. They talked about everything, and Mike remembers feeling a part of his soul investing itself within the golden boy next to him; with a heart bigger than the whole world. Mike remembers wishing he was half the man Richie was; remembers saying it to his best friend right then and there. He remembers the distinct look in those warm brown eyes as he tackled Mike in a hug so feverous it could put the other boys sunburn to the test, and Richie saying how he wishes, sometimes, he was exactly like Mike Hanlon as well. But, he reconsiders that decision because it would mean he would have to stop seeing Mrs. K.

 

 

Ben Hanscom had drifted off, before even Mike, he thinks. Fingers spreading wide, touching the soft carpet on the floor. He hasn’t tried to think about Richie, not since he received _the_ call, not since he saw the way Beverly stayed in bed all week, repeating a mantra of _no’s_ and _please, God, why wasn’t it me_ over and over again in her sleep, while Ben laid awake next to her. He wanted to speak up, then, hands tangled in those threads of wool; wants to ask all of them if their hearts are even still beating, but Ben Hanscom is scared - _terrified_ even, that with that look in Eddie’s eyes, that maybe they would all say _no_.

 

 

Ben’s even more scared he would say the same thing.

 

 

So, Ben took that moment of silence. Crandles it in his cozy, welcoming hands, while Beverly’s still in the kitchen, to think about Richie Tozier for the first time in weeks. Deeper than just the _I miss him_ he gets while walking into the library on Wednesday - the day the two would have study session and comic book debates. The big room now gets filled to the brim with silence; pushing at the seams of Ben’s sanity everytime he has to walk in there and remember that Richie isn’t just late to their meetup. _No, Ben,_ he thinks, Richie Tozier isn’t coming at all. He isn’t ever again.

 

 

Ben Hanscom doesn’t tell Bill, when he texts asking how him and Beverly are, about how he cried all day in the third stall down in the men's bathroom at IKEA; leaving Beverly in the sheet section all alone because he couldn’t take it, taken at all those silly decorations and _not_ having Richie follow them around like a child, almost breaking every thing on the shelf, giggling with the two others as they hid from employees and made weird calls back and forth, and faking accents as he asked questions about prices.

 

 

He couldn’t even tell _Beverly_.

 

 

The day passes Eddie’s mind, passing through like a zap of lightning, as he signs the final papers to make his last name Tozier. He thinks back to the tea Beverly brought back, the arm he wrapped around Stan, the way Bill and Mike and Ben inched close up till their bodies were all pressed together as one.

 

 

Sure, they were missing a part, but still working just fine.

 

 

Finally, the last thing Eddie thinks about (legally speaking as Eddie Kaspbrak!) when the ink from the tip of his pen passes into the paper on the last line, is back to what the people in the courtroom asked him.

 

 

_Why?_ They had asked, even _after_ he told them the whole entire story, start to end. Birth to Death. Angel the Devil; enough to pull some tears from a few official looking people sitting in front of Eddie.

 

 

Eddie, _who is no longer Eddie Kaspbrak_ , is sure, as the last signature if filed down, that he could give those dumb, legal people a much better response, now, than the bits of their story, the small flashes of Richie Tozier.

 

 

He could tell them that Richie was more than big glasses and loud jokes. He was much more than the childhood giggles, and Beep-Beep. More than snuggles under the sheets on winter nights, more than long limbs yanking themselves in Eddie’s window. More than buck teeth and sunburns and _acceptance_ ; more than library visits and spaghetti dinners and voicemails and first kisses.

 

 

He was a part of all the Losers, a part of everyone he spared that too-wide grin to. He was piece of all of them that no one would ever get back.

 

 

Richie Tozier is the feeling of warm sunlight hitting your skin in the morning, the butterflies you get in your stomach, he is the sorrow burrow deep in your tummy, bumping around, that you let out years to come. He is the joy of finding out what you wanted for so long is finally _yours_ , he is the passion you feel pumping through your veins, and the fondness you feel for a friend or lover or family, the tenderness after a loss. He is the overwhelming idea of loving someone more than yourself. He is the sense that you get in between the pictures candidly hung up on the walls of your perfectly painted house, a loud mouth teenager with a presence so powerful it knocks you off your feet.

 

 

A loud mouth teenager who didn’t deserve to die.

 

 

He was imperfect, _yes_ , Eddie thinks, but he was the closest thing to everything you’ve ever wanted, needed, never had, and always will. He is the full circle and without him, Eddie didn’t think he could ever go on -- yet, here he is. And Eddie knows that the way Richie Tozier impacted him has something to do with it.

 

 

**+1. Eddie visits Richie’s grave.**

 

 

He goes alone. His rich black Chrysler 300 parked next to the entrance, he doesn't mind walking. _Never for Richie._

 

 

This way, he thinks, it also feels more personable. He knows if Richie was here, he would laugh in Eddie’s face at his overly nice car; say that Eddie is better than any view a car can give. He would probably say some more things about him in these jeans too, but Eddie doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking about it too long.

 

 

There’s a lighter feeling in his step, and there’s a small smile on the young boys face, but it still hurts, Eddie feels it in his chest; a light, constant panting in his chest as he gets closer to where Stan told him Richie is. “ _It’s up the hill, right in front of the tree”_ Stan said, pressing a warm hand on his shoulder. Eddie doesn’t have to ask what tree, or what hill, because he already knows. It’s the one Richie and him climbed up during seventh grade year, when they snuck into the cemetery at ten o’clock at night on a Saturday, and they were a few minutes early, waiting for the rest of the Losers. Richie was trying to tell Eddie scary stories, a flickering flashlight in his hands, and a cliche quiver in his voice. _But_ it was Eddie who accidently let out a bloody-murder like scream when the bushes rumbled unexpectedly to reveal Ben, huddled next to Bill, which, in turn, caused Richie to fall out of the tree; face planting.

 

 

Everyday following that one, it became _their_ spot, where the Losers met, and brought up the story time and time again, until they all doubled over in giggles at Richie’s rolling eyes. It was also the spot where Eddie confessed that he wouldn’t ever want Richie hurt, a blush permanente on his cheeks, helping Richie up, and rubbing the dirt off the taller boys glasses with his blue polo. Richie only smiled in response, weakly, his heart hurt so much from love at thirteen. He told the small blushing boy, a fire cracking in his voice, that he would take any pain for Eddie, at any time, because he would do anything for him.

 

 

Eddie likes to think of it as a confession place of sorts.

 

 

When he finally gets there, two feet planted a little away from the front of his headstone. Eddie closes his eyes lightly; pinching the base of his nose with his thumb and index finger. A habit to stop the inevitable. He feels his boot tip crunch on lowly grown grass. _Take your time, Eddie._

 

 

“I-I guess I should apologize for being a bit late,” Eddie sputters, a small chuckle in his voice wondering through. He envisions Richie leaning against the willow tree, with no grave. Long legs stuffed into those dark-hipster jeans with holes, and a horrible unbuttoned flannel over a short sleeved hawaiian shirt. Probably a neon green shirt underneath too, _just_ to get on Eddie’s nerves. To make up for it, though, Eddie bets he would have on those scuffed up vans -- the black ones, with Eddie’s name written next to a bunch of hearts on the edge. _That way you’ll be with me every step of the way, Spaghetti!_

 

 

Eddie opens his eyes a crack. Dipping his toes into the cold, shivering water of the realization he’s _here_ , and that six feet under him is Richie. His squinted eyes are staring at the tree, branches covering the space above them. Richie would probably crack a joke at the tone of his voice.

 

 

“But, I’m not, heh, not going to. Only because it looks like I’m copying your ways. By how I’m always, uh, always late, you know?” Eddie leans back to sit down, his knees bending and slacks touching the uncut grass at the end of the grave, where his boot tips where just a minute ago. He pauses before pressing a hand on the ground; thinking how Richie was on perfect schedule, heading home at from work on time that day just to get home to Eddie, who complained that he would have to eat dinner alone again if Richie were to leave at eight o’clock again. “I wish you were late that day.”

 

 

“That probably sounds so..rude. I know, _Trashmouth_ .” Eddie breathes out a shaky, sad, and stiff laugh, tears pricking at the edges of his peering eyes.  “If you were late that day, you’d be here now. I feel like that’s jus- _just_ , something that goes through my mind constantly. All the damn time, honey.”

 

 

A small breeze runs through the air, comforting the silence, but whistling through the little spaces in Eddie’s grown out hair. He’s fully seated on the ground at this point, turning his head down, as if to hide the ugly-crying face he’s making from the imaginary Richie leaning cooly against the tree in front of him. “Like, it’s like the times when I look at the right side of the bed for hours at night. Or stare at that red alarm clock that reminds me of the color your vans, or like when I kick out to play footsies with you on our couch, and you’re not there to ever kick back, a-and it’s so damn hard, Richie.” Eddie sighs, deeply, and takes a clump of grass in his hand, tugging it out of the ground, strand by strand, like a child. “Y’know, I stayed up one night, _eh_ , about a couple months ago, around June?” (Eddie mentally slaps himself for asking a question that will go unanswered by the other party). “And, you’ll laugh at this, but I bought every dictionary and thesaurus I could find off Amazon. Every single one. I think it ended up being about fifteen? And by the following week, when I finally got my hands on them, I searched all night, again, right? All night trying to find a word, in those dumb books, that embodied my pain and feeling of being, l-left behind.”

 

 

“I couldn't find _one_ , not one at all. You want to know why?” Eddie presses his boot heel into the ground, worrying his lip between his teeth. As if this one on one, non-climatic, conversation between him and his deceased lover would be broadcasted to the world. “Because,” _cue a dramatic pause to settle his nerves,_ “there is no word in the world that could encompass you, Richard. Not a single fucking word in the world. I could even throw, uh, some random shakespeare line at you or a million page glossary of my favorite words that remind me of you, but none of them could _be_ you.”

 

 

The small smile that settled along his lips at the start of his walk is slowly making a crack in the steel cage it has been in; gently lifting one side of Eddie’s cheek, and digging out a small dimple to play on his cheek, one that Richie loved to kiss. “You’re everything, ‘Chee. Everything around me. Everything is _you_.”

 

 

Eddie dips his legs crossed, pulling the boot edges closer underneath him.“At first, I hated it, as expected, I think. I wanted to rip my hair out, or cry until I couldn’t anymore, until my lungs stopped working, because every single day included a blaring reminder of you. God, I _hated_ it. I just wanted a small break, but it felt like I kept running, running, running. But I learned,” He rubs his sleeve against his nose, letting out an obnoxious sniffle. “ _Uh_ , I learned that not accepting you are gone, is somehow worse than accepting it. I would hear a song, _God_ , Rich, and it would stay in my mind for weeks. Weeks and weeks. I would see a simple sign and it would be printed on my eyelids as I fell asleep for the following two months. I knew I couldn’t escape it, but I wouldn’t let myself admit I was hurting -- I was so used to everyone being able to tell. Everyone being able to know when it was getting out of my own two hands, and reminding me so I wouldn’t have to tell myself. But, eh, not even Maggie could see it this time, I don’t think. I put up a good fight. Actually, I guess I was just used to only you being able to tell.”

 

 

“I want to be able to tell you that there’s a point to all this gibberish that I am saying, baby. I _really_ do.” Eddie stops at baby, for a second because there are fat, wet tears rolling down his cheeks now, and the saltiness is brushing against his upper lip and traveling into his mouth as he opens it to start talking again. “But, what I think I am trying to tell you, is that I’m happy. For the first time in a long, long while. I used to assume it wouldn’t ever heal; I thought changing my last name to yours, or having dinner dates with your parents would duck my head under water long enough that I would drown in the idea that you’re still here.”

 

 

“Yet, what I didn’t let myself have, was a chance to reflect. Those things helped, yes, they did, but I know you’re fucking gone, but shit, Richie, you’re still everywhere and I shouldn’t have been looking in all the wrong places I was for so long that I didn’t cherish it. I took the stages of grief I thought I was supposed to have, and didn’t let myself just remember you for the good and not for the mourning sorrow.” Eddie lays back, not caring if his crisp, white shirt gets a bit dirty. “I miss you, with all of my being, and I am sure you know that by now. Doesn’t take long to convince that ego.”

 

 

Eddie likes to think Richie giggled at that one, scrunched up nose, moving freckles, and all. “I will never love another like you, nor will I try; even if the whole world was begging me on their damn knees. It’s me and you forever, sweetheart. Forever. You didn’t live half as long as you should have, but you will _always_ live here.” Eddie knows it’s cheesy, and no one can even see him, face burning with embarrassment and emotion, but he slots his hand over his heart anyway. Tapping it three times, like Richie would on his thigh whenever Eddie got anxiety in crowded settings. A silent _I love you_. “And in Stan’s heart too. Even if he doesn’t want to admit that a Trashmouth opened him up before anyone else.”

 

 

Eddie lifts his eyelids open, staring at the branches framing the sky. Maybe everything will be okay. “But, baby, let me tell about this past year. You haven't heard half of it.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> waaaaa this was such a journey to write but i’m so proud of it. there were a lot of errors that i had to clean up but i hope for those of you reading this again, that it makes more sense. i love u all and feel free to reach out to me ! xo


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